Tidying up and Little Quilts

I love Patchwork and Quilting!

When I am working on a quilt project I like to keep all the fabrics for that project together, and sometimes that could be for weeks, months and even years!  The fabric choices are usually from my "finely curated collection" and many have waited a long time to get selected for use.  And, when a project reaches the point when I know no more fabric will be needed, the tidy up is very satisfying.  These are all the trimmed up leftovers from the Good Hope mystery, started 6 January this year.  (Two tops, backs and bindings waiting their turn to be quilted.)  The trimmings are strips of 3.5", 2.5", 2" and 1.5";  squares of 4.5", 3.5", 2.5", 2" and 1.5"; some strings and crumb pieces; various size wonky-ish pinwheel blocks from bonus half-square-triangles.  And, new to me, thanks to Cathy at https://saneandcrazy.blogspot.com/, some "nibbles" - ends of strips after cutting off squares from strips, here 2", 2.5" and 3.5".  If I really like them, pieces of fabric bigger than a quarter metre get put back into cupboard with similar coloured fabrics, just five pieces this time.

And with that tidying up out of the way I had some space and time to work on the Little Quilts of Love.  These are  made from donated fabrics, and are now all finished.

 

 

Once a month the co-ordinator of this project hosts a group of quilters at her home to cut,  press, trim, sew, finish, label (and have lunch).  Some fabrics are donations received, and others are sourced at local shops.  She and I cut 10 kits for others to sew...I came home with three of them!  One now finished, and the other two in progress:

 

 

Lastly, my monthly Quilt Group is doing a Block of the Month, these are October's, a 12" block.  The fabric selections are based on Rainbow Scrap Challenge's "light neutrals" for this month

I am feeling a little bit guilty that there has been a void here, but I'm going to just pretend that I haven't had the will to write anything recently!  When I read another quilt blogger wondering why there were quilters were seemingly blogging less, the guilt deepened!   With that in mind, here are some of the few photos of my minor progresses / odd acheivements. 

A box of green crumbs and strips, that were sorted to this...

...and this...

...and stitched up to this....

Probably about a yard/metre of fun new made fabric.

Finally, just before Christmas, the council conceded to install the new house water meter! We had been waiting for nearly a year for this to happen.

There were some navy triangles in the blue box that were the start of these crumb blocks.

Trying out a new-to-me technique - Kawandi.  Enjoyable to hand stitch!

The garage of the new house all tiled, with the solar power installed, and the finished kitchen through the door.  The area under the stairs is not concreted so has a different flooring.

April is the purple month.  About 30 crazy pieces. Still no fixed ideas of how they will be used!

This is one week of a mystery quilt which I decided to use the brown crumb pieces for one of the fabrics,and I am loving it.  The mystery is over, and now need to sew all the various blocks together.  https://www.goodhopequiltersguild.org.za/mystery-block-of-the-month

It felt good to be writing and sharing, so hopefully this is the start of more regular posts.

Another check-in

Where does the time go?!    I mean, wasn't it New Year just yesterday?  And lo and behold, the next New Year is just around the corner!  

My old/new news:  still working from home, and I am still enjoying it.  The world is still trying to figure out how to live with Covid-19.  I am grateful to have been vaccinated.  Four stitches in the finger that got in the way of my scissors - all healed now.  My son is visiting us from the UK for an extended period while he completes his studies.  My grandson started Nursery in Wales, and he is a constant delight.  My mobile phone went for a swim in our pool - have new one but it's not as nice!  Luckily managed to get all pictures and data off the old one but only if plugged into a power socket!

Well, sewing... I am satisfied with what is getting done!   A quick summary of the year:  21 quilt tops pieced or assembled, pieced 9 quilt backs, 11 quilted and bound (8 in the past month!)

I play along with Angela at So Scrappy and this year aimed to make at least one top from random/orphan blocks in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge (RSC) colour of each month, happy to say, goal exceeded!  In August I had a light-bulb moment (don't laugh), why not piece backs from less loved fabrics whilst the quilt top is still pinned up and being admired- best idea this year!

The reasons I used-to-have for not wanting to go near the quilt frame:

•   No backing ready 
  
•   Throat space quite small (9") on machine - starts at 6", diminishes to 4"  work space.
  
•   Batting not at hand, or needs to be joined
•   Thread always breaking, both top and bobbin
•   Rather be fondling fabric and piecing
  

I think (I hope) I have overcome/learnt to live with these problems.  My Pfaff Grand Quilters are not long arm machines, just fast straight stitch machines (great workhorses for piecing) and without stitch regulators.

• Next year will be the Year of the Backs!  Will make backings each month in the RSC colour and prep bindings
  
• Looking for and trying out 4" height free-motion quilting designs - keeping the designs very loose
  
• Bought WIDE batting;  I keep yearning for the fabulous bamboo I got in Australia, but making do with local polyester
• Thread problem resolved:  using a bigger needle 90/14 - polyester thread in bobbin (has a little stretch) - and using cotton quilting thread on top.  Last eight quilts, only one thread break!
• Fabric - always time to play!

In September, under the prompting of my very good friend - The Quilting Co -  challenging us to get UFOs moving, I listed all (100) of mine.  Am glad to say that has already reduced to 92.

Aah!  Just discovered that I have access to (some) pictures without uploading from my phone!  These are three of the finishes.

My niece and her two daughters, getting the baby's quilt.

Folded hexagons, zig-zagged together, and bound with left-over bindings:

 

Curvy Squares:

The jacaranda tree in the garden of the new house that will be finished next year.  It was severely trimmed three years ago before the building started and is now glorious:

That's all for now.

The Continuing Quietness

We have been told that the strict lockdown conditions will start to be eased as from next Friday.  To contain the growing virus scourge, this will happen gradually, but maybe slower in the metro areas than the rural areas.  We can't continue much longer without some more economic activity as a large portion of our population will simply starve.  Much has been done to feed as many people as possible, but there are still many not being reached.

I had planned to try and post regularly on a Friday, weekly seems a bit easier than more often.   But, when looking last Friday, most of the photographs from the previous two weeks had been replaced with a grey no-entry type graphic, which promptly sent me into a decline!  After a few days I put my photos back, but lacked the desire to write any more.

These are my RSC blocks for April's colour of light and bright blue.  Four more scrap slabs, and four scrap kites.  Actually, it took very little sewing, as I had some bigger rough slabs tucked away in the box of blue crumbs from the last time this colour had a turn, serendipity!

 

Finally felt up to playing the blocks from RSC2019's Tiny Tuesdays.  These were a block a week last year.  Tried to alternate square and on point blocks, but did not have an equal number of each, so played and played until this layout seemed the best it would be.  Stitching up was quick, and it was a delight to have on the wall for a few days.

 Frolic ll - with first two borders on.  Yes, somewhat  a bit wavy on the bottom.

And with the final border on.  Still a bit wavy on the sides, but I'm sure the quilting will take care of that!  I have enough pieces and parts left over from this that would probably make other quilt, but decided to file them away for the future.

 I have four loose inch-and-a-half thick polystyrene boards covered in brushed cotton/flannel, as my design walls.  Mostly two out at a time, next to each other, propped up against my bookcases, so quilts don't quite lie perfectly flat on them. 

 The central blocks, of which I have 53, were made last year.  The plan was each month to take RSC colour as the centre of 6-10, and add the previous month's colour as the next round, using string pieces.  Each round was carefully trimmed as big as possible with 90-degree angles, some ended up square and some as rectangles. Each block has six rounds, in the same order, but starting with one of the six colours.

To these 30 blocks a final wide round of either white with a single colour print or a white with black print added.  And trimmed to 12.5-inches square.

 The prints had been stored for some time, and were not getting used much. 

My desk is very close the design wall!

Turned through 90-degrees.  Size at this stage is about 60-inches by 72-inches.

The remaining 23 blocks are being put away to be played with at a future date.  Some have the final round added, but they ended up smaller than these in the quilt top.

This has taken most of the evening to transfer and edit photos, and to write, and I wish I know how other bloggers are able to write more frequently!   For me it is often a tug-of-war between writing and sewing!  But it's useful, and nice, to look back at previous photos.

March 2020 sewing

Working from home, now three weeks in, has meant that I seem to have had less time for sewing, but maybe that is an illusion.  

The pandemic numbers are rising, slowly here thankfully, but alarmingly elsewhere.

This was the list of the planned sewing for the aborted long weekend away.  Yes, I had worked out roughly how long each partial project would take, as I didn't want to run out!

 

 These were the project boxes for the list, almost all were cut or in strips.

I didn't get even close to the sewing machine until the Saturday afternoon, can't remember why, but eventually since then each project has had it's turn to be moved on a little.

First on the list were the March blocks for Good Hope Quilters'Guild Mystery 2020.

 The above cut pieces turned into these blocks. I really like them!

Teal was March's colour of the month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge 

Framed Nine-Patches (numbers 65 to 76...getting close to the 99 needed), although they don't look too Teal-ish in this photo, each print has some darker teal on it!

Four more Scrappy Slabs.  These are the thirtheenth set of four, need seven more sets.

 Postage Stamp blocks.  I don't know how many of these I will need, but these 3 x 8-inch, 1x 6-inch and 5 x 4-inch blocks bring the total number of blocks to 102 blocks. And I think I like them on-point.

Teal kite shapes. Definitely teal, not the more blue they seem!

  

And, yay, a finished top.  My Bonnie Hunter Frolic re-engineered.  About 67" x 80"

And have started sewing up the remainder of the blocks but playing with

 a different layout, and edging.  Some way to go on this still.

This is Claremont Main Road at 2pm yesterday when I ventured

 out yesterday, after a week at home to forage for food buy milk.

 Almost devoid of traffic, it is normally one

 of the busiest intersections in the area, and not a minibus taxi to be seen.

  Good to see the now mandated country-wide lockdown is being observed.

 And, from that list, although I did work on the Dress-Up Orphans (no pictures), I decided to abandon the purple split 9-patches, and never even looked at the Jack's Chain blocks.

But it is the start of another non-socialising week-end / week  /month, so maybe some more to show in due course.  Lots of Netflix viewing or BBC Radio Comedy to sew along to.  

Off to sew!

January Block Lotto Blocks

The Blocks for the January Lotto are red String pieced Hearts.  We were asked to share how we make the blocks so I took some process photos.

From the box of red strings selected a range of longer ones.










Then decide which to put next to which -  ummm, that usually gets mixed up at some stage of the sewing!






Picked up first two and stitch, and then chain-piece each of the other pairs.

I cut apart the pairs and lay them down again.   I now sew these pairs into fours, but I sew from the other direction - this means that I have sewn half the seams in one direction and the other half in the other direction and this sort-of keeps the slabs of strings from curving too much.   I try to align all the ends on one side.

I press all the seams in one direction.

For the heart blocks we had to cut two rectangles - look! bits left-over to start the next one!

We added the white squares on the corners, but I like to sew another seam and keep the extra half-triangle squares for a some-day project.









On the left is the final Heart Block.

I followed the same process for one below.  The one on the left I made by adding smaller then bigger red triangles in a circular arrangement until the made fabric was big enough.

And then stitched up the extra made HST squares into little wonky windmills to add to the growing pile!   The blog header picture shows lots of green and white wonky windmills bordered with scrap purple strips - but that's as far as those have gone!